Anyone following the work of musician Aaron Strumpel will know that he is increasingly dangerous and defiant of musical convention. And so he wishes to offer you a Christmas gift in the form of a three track EP, at no charge to your good or bad selves.

Yes, it features three well known Christmas tracks, and is available for free from his website (www.aaronstrumpel.com). It will also, most likely, neatly divide people into two camps – those who relish his wild, crazy, bombastic approach to writing, and those who just don’t get it, whatever the heck “it” is anyway.

I’m in camp one. I absolutely love this dude, the music he makes and the beating heart that pours out so much into his songwriting, recording and production. This very statement may cause you to distrust my musical recommendations from this day forward, but so be it – I’m a Strumpel fan, period.

The musical canvas is a fitting blend of modern and traditional, as trumpets, jingling bells, and vocal choruses are filtered through Aaron’s cacophony pedal (at least, that’s what I suspect he uses). It’s a joyful noise and it requires some adjustment to your expectations about music. Think John Coltrane and Miles Davis in some of their more free form moods and you’re on the right track. But rest assured that this “noise” is actually the fruit of much musical study and a profound growth in both knowledge and freedom of expression.

Whilst the rest of the industry tirelessly churns out rehashes of familiar arrangements of traditional tunes, or tries to convince us that more songs about Santa are helpful to our enjoyment of this most festive of seasons, Strumpel’s Christmas EP is going in my playlist next to Sufjan, Bob Dylan, Jars of Clay and some more traditional old favorites.

Thanks for the gift, Aaron – keep being wild and Merry Christmas to you.

4 Comments

I’m in the camp that holds the cornucopia in my ear and says “what in the tarnations is that?”

i’d like to be ultra hip and say I appreciate this ep, but honestly i’ve got such a warm spot for burl ives…

I think burl ives would have crapped his pants.

sounds too much like elephants. but i can appreciate that there was aarons own vision, and it was dynamic. What I like about good art is the blend of line, shape color texture, and intention. i don’t feel like the lines of melody blended with the texture and colors of the synthetic, droning horns, and the emotive-birth- of-Jesus intention in original versions was lost in the subdued sounds of aarons beautiful, but (in this ep run) warbled voice.

Now, open for critique is my utter absence of any sort of vocal, or musical endeavor:-) I’m still trying to sing and play “you are so good to me” without sounding like, as Leo Kottke so unreasonably labeled his singing voice, a “barking goat.”

haha, thanks for the comment paul – i had to look up burl ives on wiki:

Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives (June 14, 1909 – April 14, 1995) was an American actor, writer and folk music singer.
As an actor, Ives’s work included comedies, dramas, and voice work in theater, television, and motion pictures. Referring to Ives’s singing, music critic John Rockwell said, “Ives’s voice … had the sheen and finesse of opera without its latter-day Puccinian vulgarities and without the pretensions of operatic ritual. It was genteel in expressive impact without being genteel in social conformity. And it moved people.”[1]

it’s funny when one takes dear, sentimental songs and runs it through the mill of one’s own heart and experience and shoots it out in a finished form, eh? i recorded this ep in two days, really it was the work of one solid day and if you’d asked me to record it a month ago right after returning from gaza/israel, it may have been very very different with a whole lot of traditional middle-east flair! 🙂

i do think i’d like to complete a full-length christmas record and there would very much be a larger diversity of style within that…perhaps take a day every week till christmas to put out three more songs and see how they end up…we’ll see. maybe one set will hearken to the burl days…

Its funny, the two camps you set out. I am in number one, like you, while others in my family are very much in camp two. I was playing it (quietly even) with my parents in the next room and they could not handle it. It got under their skin to such a degree that I had to turn it off for them. From now on it seems I am fated to listening to it by myself, lest it/I stir up provocations. But, I find that to be some of the value of this ep. That it does stir up provocations…it seems Christmas music so rarely does that. Perhaps we are forced to see the beauty of the subject…that is, if we are willing to struggle to see it. Rather than have it crammed down our throats.

And…given all the surrounding drama that was there at Jesus’ birth, this seems to make a lot of sense. I mean, dirty stables suggest a different melody than pristine neatness…and yet there is beauty in the fact that here is the incarnation. But you might have to struggle a bit to find it.

I guess that’s kind of how I hear it; how I make sense of it. And, how I find it to be moving.

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